


Causal Nexus

by tentacledicks



Series: Points of Contact [1]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Brain Damage, Consensual Non-Consent, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Disassociation, Disordered Eating, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Victim Blaming, M/M, Past Drug Use, Psychotic break, Suicidal Thoughts, Traumatic Brain Injury, Whump, past Aiden Pearce/Damien Brenks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:41:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24657022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: The article gets passed around Vigilante fansites, like most articles involving mysterious acts of violence, but this one is different. Probably a copycat, because the Vigilante killed people (often enough that true crime fans had to remind each other that hewasa known serial killer) but he didn’t usually go that far. If he was moving to arson now, everyone would know.Probably a copycat, the message boards agree when a month goes by without any other incidents in that city. The country’s full of them. And the Vigilante wouldn’t blow up a sports bar without good reason.
Relationships: Aiden Pearce & Donna "Poppy" Dean, Jordi Chin/Aiden Pearce
Series: Points of Contact [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843849
Comments: 27
Kudos: 45





	1. [FALL]

**Author's Note:**

> This Is Exactly What It Says On The Tin
> 
> For reference, I am probably never going to type out the rape scene in full, and Aiden has issues with recall for a couple different reasons. It crops up a _lot_ in his internal narrative though, so it's tagged for it.

The morning after, he asks for a carton of cigarettes and pretends like the expense is normal, like he’s the kind of person to buy ten packs of Marlboro gold 100s in one shot instead of picking up a pack here, a pack there. His hands don’t shake. He buys a bottle of 40 despite the agonizing headache pounding in his temples and ignores the way the clerk keeps looking at his black eye, at the cut on his scalp, at the bruises smeared red and purple over the side of his face. Better not to make conversation. His tongue is too thick in his mouth and his balance is shot, the world swinging wildly between nausea and the wobbly uncertainty of eyes that don’t want to work right.

They don’t ask him for an ID and he doesn’t offer one. He pays in cash, picks up the plastic bag in one hand and the paper bag in another, then muscles his way out of the convenience store without waiting for someone to hold the door. They do that down here. Hold doors.

He doesn’t think about what else they do down here as he walks back to his shitty motel, not limping despite the way it hurts to move. Stops at a crosswalk and digs a pack of cigarettes out of the box, rips it open and snatches one with his teeth, lights it with hands that don’t shake before stepping onto the road when the green man flashed onto the sign. People give him a wide berth between the smoke and the look on his face, which suits him just fine. If someone touched him, he’d have to kill them. Better that they don’t touch at all.

His motel door opens easy under his touch and he sets his cigarettes and alcohol on the side table next to the bed before clearing the room, checking behind the doors and testing the vents for any looseness, any bugs. Only once he’s certain no one’s been through does he lock the door behind himself, flips the deadbolt and pushes the chair under the knob for good measure. Hard to kick in a door that’s blocked in more ways than one.

Should have picked up food. Meant to pick up food. It’s hard to remember what he means to do, with the headache chewing on his brainstem and the bile in his throat, but he’s pretty sure he meant to do that. The cigarettes help with the nausea and help push away the hunger, so he sticks with those. When his head hurts a little less, he’ll break into the malt liquor, but it hurts too much to think about drinking right now. Water’s better. Water’s fine.

He checks the safety on his gun, checks the bullet in the chamber and the bullets in the magazine, then sets it on the bathroom counter with the barrel pointed out. Not in his hand. Not against his temple.

There’s a pile of ashed cigarettes next to him when he comes to again, heaving over the toilet and fighting against the scream caught in his throat. His phone isn’t in sight but the dent in the wall plaster tells him enough. Maybe it’s not broken. He hopes it’s not broken. Can’t tell what set him off with the concussion making it hard to keep time, but his clothes are in a pile on the floor and the shower is going. Probably meant to shower again, as if the tepid water would be enough to banish the agony between his legs, as if he could wash away the feel of hands pinning him down, as if he’d ever be clean.

Wonder of wonders, it turns out there is something left in his stomach after all. He gags on the acid that burns the back of his throat and tries not to sob, one more ignoble injury after a whole fucking week after them, then drags himself under the shower spray again. Fuck it. Just because he’ll never be clean doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy the water when it hits anyways.

His grandmother believed in fairies but not as much as his father believed in killing the English. He’s always wanted to be a selkie, to be a merman, to be something other than human as an explanation for the wrongness that dogs his steps at every moment. He wants to shuck the human skin that doesn’t fit right and spill into a shape that fits better, wants to be a seal or a wolf or a waterhorse, wants to pretend that all the horrors he’s felt weren’t of his own making for once.

The broken ribs creak under the strain of his gasps, the bruised stain of fingers on his arms blurred in his vision—tears, steam, brain damage, it doesn’t matter why. He just finds a little bit of comfort in the fact that he can’t see them clear anymore, can’t picture perfectly the pale hands wrapped around them. Even without the images, the feelings linger, but that’s a kind of ghost he’s dealt with before.

Just like with the car crash. Couldn’t stick it into a box but at least this tragedy has no collateral damage, just him. He spent two weeks in the hospital healing up, glass so dangerously close to cutting something vital when the car rolled and crushed him underneath, but this was all him, him alone. Two weeks in the hospital with Jackson dead silent and Lena just dead was a torture worse than any other. This is just him. He can face it alone.

He’d killed three of the motherfuckers, maybe more. Once he can see straight, he’ll go back and kill the rest. And then the ghosts will go silent, the way killing Quinn had made Lena go silent, the way killing Damien had put Clara to rest.

It will be better, once things are quiet.

* * *

He buys bullets, hands the man behind the counter a fake drivers license that passes muster, and feels the heavy weight of his gun at the small of his back. No jacket, because the jacket is easy to spot and he couldn’t touch it without feeling hands again, so under his shirt was the next best thing. Four boxes, because he’s got the feeling that he’s going to be wild and reckless tonight, so it’s better to be overprepared than underprepared.

If he’s sleeping, he can’t remember it. Time skips, and only half of it can be blamed on the concussion, slow to heal and slower to be forgotten. The insomnia, the delirium, the ghosts that grab him every time he stops to think, those are the likely culprits this time. He didn’t need to take a bottle of Jack to the skull to fuck his brain up. It’s been fucked up for years.

The car he drives is dubiously acquired but none of the cops have run the plates yet. That’s fine. He plans to be out of this town by tomorrow, already checked out of the motel and dumped his bags in the backseat. Laptop, rifle, handguns, drugs. Hasn’t touched the drugs. Only got halfway through the bottle of 40 before stuffing it in the bag too, wrapped up in the jacket he can’t bear to wear right now. He’s smoked eight packs of cigarettes in four days, which would be concerning under other circumstances, but it kills the need to eat and then kills his ability to smell and taste whatever it is he shoves in his face when the shakes get bad. He needs to not be in his body now, so the less he feels, the better.

He parks the car at the back of the lot, three hours after the bar opened and at least seven hours before it closes for last call. Right now it’s a motley group of men coming to watch the game, college kids coming to play pool and get drunk in a quieter place than a club, regulars from the neighborhood who’d been drinking there for years. Closer to midnight, it’ll mostly be the regulars. Past midnight, it’ll just be him.

Everything goes orange and purple as the sun sets, the parking lot full up of people buying shitty bar food and playing shitty bar music. Trucks come, trucks go, lifted and lowered, muscle cars and plucky eco-friendly subcompacts filtering in between them. They like trucks down here, even if the people running this bar come from countries where those same trucks wouldn’t fit on the damn roads. The old country roots feed into faux Western aesthetics until the sports bar has that particular fit of Americana that isn’t quite either.

His breathing slows and evens out as he waits. Gravel crunches under tires as the college kids leave to study, and then the rowdy sports fans follow them shortly after. The clock ticks ever closer to midnight as the parking lot empties out until it’s just him and the regulars left. Just him and the gangsters peddling their cheap fucking imports, drugs that weren’t worth the price without the bodies attached to them. He tried to be stealthy, subtle, careful last time. Tried to slip in and out with no one the wiser, hoping to rescue a few people and knock out a few thugs without serious repercussions. Knowing what kind of scum they were, he still tried to be fair in the punishment he’d dealt out.

That was a mistake. He won’t make that mistake again.

Three minutes after midnight, he climbs out of the driver’s seat and opens up the back. The rifle comes easy, two spare magazines shoved in the back pocket of his jeans, another two magazines for the pistol in the other pocket. He stuffs a third magazine in his boot and rolls the leg of his jeans over it, at which point he’s run out of things to rack bullets in. His cigarettes and his phone occupy the front of his pants. He shoves a lighter in the other boot, just to have some balance.

It still hurts to walk but he can see out of his left eye now, the bruises gone yellow and ugly as the blood rots under his skin. Intellectually, he knows that’s not entirely accurate, but it feel right—the more things fade, the more the rot buries itself in him instead, digging its roots deeper with every second. His head hurts. His head hasn’t stopped hurting. He won’t give them a chance to get that close again.

No way to tell whether or not the people he shoots are civilians. If he had his phone out, ctOS would tell him, would unfold all their crimes and their secrets for him, would mark the ones belonging to this arm of the gang from the pseudo-innocents that just support them. A phone gets in the way of his grip on the rifle though, so he doesn’t pull it out. Just unloads the clip, two bullets for every man, and drops the magazine. Slots a new one in. Continues on.

They burst out of the back rooms like they can do something about it, guns trained on him and their eyes wide and white, but he moves quicker. Three men to start with—all things come in threes, he thinks, baring his teeth in something that is not a smile—and then two more staggering back as he steps over the corpses. It’s not a very big bar. There’s not much room for them to hide in.

He sweeps the office, the stockrooms, the basement where they keep the drugs and the boys before selling them off. No boys this time, not like the last time, because they’re off schedule here after a visit from the Vigilante. It’s fine. There’s drugs and there’s chemicals that will burn something fierce. He sweeps the whole bar again, recognizes one of the dead men, and puts so many bullets in his head that it resembles nothing so much as an overripe watermelon, tossed from the top floor balcony of an apartment building. Lots of red chunks.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, an alert that the cops have been called ringing out in discord with the low country croon over the bar stereo. That’s fine too, because it takes them near thirty minutes to drive out here, and they won’t send a lone squadcar when they know this is gang territory. It does mean he has a time limit now though, so he sweeps the bar a third time before heading downstairs to grab all the flammables he can find, pouring them out over the basement floor before heading upstairs to do the same.

It’s a good old building, at least sixty years old, mostly wood and very little asbestos. He pours and pours and pours until the fumes threaten to choke him, then remembers to break open the register and steal the cash before heading out the front door again. The lighter in his boot is body warm when he pulls it out and his thumb slips twice before he manages to light it.

The fire reaches the alcohol on the shelves just as he’s pulling out of the parking lot. His tires skid as the explosion pushes him sideways, but he doesn’t go into the ditch and he has plenty of cash stuffed down the front of his pants now. It doesn’t matter how many people stare at the bar going up in flames, how many of them mark his car, how many caught the sight of a man walking out after lighting it. He’ll dump this car and get a better one, head to a place where no one holds the doors and no one pins him down, and he’ll be fine, he’ll be _vindicated_ , he’ll have purged all his ghosts with violence just like he did the last time, and the time before, and the time before that.

He feels, more than he hears, the crunch of metal and a little girl not even aware enough to scream. He feels, more than he hears, the zip of jeans being opened and the too-rough laugh of a man that never stopped smoking. He feels, more than he hears, Damien’s voice whispering _my boy_ in his ears.

He pulls over to the side of the road, barely getting the car door open before he throws up.

* * *

The problem is, the nightmares don’t stop.

They get worse.

When he dreamed about the car crash, waking up with a sickening jolt every time, there’d been something of a mundanity to it. The dream never changed, after all; it was part of the horror. His hands on the wheel, his voice curling around the same words every night, the barest glimpse of Maurice’s face before everything went to hell. He played out the memory again and again, cementing it in his mind until it was impossible to deviate from. The car crash was a constant, one that faded after Quinn died but never fully went away.

These nightmares are another beast entirely. He can never quite remember the moment where he went from trying to convince a drug mule to run away with him to pinned on the wood of the taproom floor. Some of that has to be from the bottle of Jack, broken on his skull and leaving a sharp white scar underneath his hair, but some of it is just—something else. Sometimes they leave most of his clothes on. Sometimes everything but the jacket gets torn off. Sometimes it’s them. Most of the time, it’s Damien, whispering obscenities in his ears as he gets fucked raw, hands that should be calloused gone baby-soft when they pinned him to the ground.

Damien was dead, was fucking _dead_ , but his face transposes over the face of a man who backhands him just to watch his head snap back. He shoots Damien on a lighthouse in Chicago, but he sees him fall back in surprise when someone gets complacent and his hand finds the gun at their hip. He kills the men who touched him and then kills Damien, again and again and again, and it’s never enough because he wakes up with a headache and a hitch in his breathing and the feeling of being unclean shivering its way up his gut.

He dreams about Lena’s little voice screaming and the metal of the car crunching and then Damien’s hands are pinning him to asphalt and gravel as some other man shoves his legs wide open so they can take turns and it’s never the _same_. He can’t remember which version was the real one, which memory actually fit the series of events that rocked through true crime circles for a few weeks before fading out of the minds of imageboards and enthusiasts. No one else can tell him either. No one else knows he was there.

When he makes the mistake of swallowing pills and then chugging a new bottle of something that burns, it gets worse. He throws up everything he’s ever _thought_ of eating, traps himself in an endless cycling nightmare of not-memories for almost sixteen hours, then flushes the rest of the bottles down the toilet when he finally claws his way back up to rationality. Both of them.

Instead he smokes now, burns through two packs a day like it's _normal_ , like he hadn’t cut back to maybe three or four cigarettes before everything else. It helps him sleep, if what he does can be considered sleeping, but it doesn’t help the way benzos and alcohol do. Still can’t risk it. Next time he might die.

And that’s not the worst thought he’s ever had, dying. He pushes the barrel of his gun against his temple, just past where the white scar begins, and thinks about the way the headache might stop if he put something else in its place. But then he remembers, like he always remembers, that there’s always another fucking scumlord waiting out there, hoping to score or to fuck or to kill, and he falls back into old habits. Finds someone lurking in an alleyway and beats a headache into _them_ instead.

Finds a bar or a club and picks a table, waiting to see which motherfucker wants to slip something into a drink meant for someone else.

He’s not—he’s not rational, he knows that. The detached, cynical part of him that pilots the body around most of the time recognizes this, and recognizes that he’s not dealing with it as well as he should be. He thought killing them would erase the feel of hands on his skin, of bruises on his bones, but it didn’t. So now he finds the kind of men who’d do that to someone and kills them _instead_. No second chances, not anymore. There’s no room in him for second chances.

It’s better than the other option anyways. He made the mistake of trying to overwrite the memories with something else, made the mistake of flirting with someone and letting them coax him into a bathroom with the promise of a handjob and maybe more. Once. Nearly broke the poor man’s shoulder and then fumbled the apology so badly that it was just safer to leave the city entirely. He can’t feel someone’s hands on him, gentle or rough, without remembering the Damien that never lived long enough to force him down on the ground, and it makes him lash out.

A rapist is a safe target. He finds one in every bar, invariably, and he goes out pretty often. When he breaks their arms, their legs, their necks, it feels okay. Never as good as the first time—and there’s a joke in there about addiction and his nastiest habits—but it helps silence the ghosts for long enough that he pretends like he can sleep again. The illusion shatters when his eyes finally close, but he keeps trying.

This little fucker tonight is a real piece of work. He traces through the man’s old social media, his hookup apps, finds all the things that aren’t said about him where it’s easy to find. The nice thing about ctOS is that it ties all those pieces back to him, easy for anyone to see, and even if the college never did anything about this piece of shit, nothing’s stopping _him_ from doing something. He waits, because he’s always waited, for the little fucker to actually act—to see a girl he’d been eyeing turn her back, to step over to her table and drop something in her cup, to step past before she turns around so she won’t tie it to him when she gets too fucked up to remember who took her home tonight. And when the little fucker does finally go through all the steps, he’s right there behind him, knocking the glass over with a well-timed elbow, sliding a hand over the little fucker’s neck and steering him towards the bathrooms.

“Hey man, what the fuck?” the stupid piece of shit asks, still thinking that he’s hot shit, still thinking that he doesn’t know. No one turns to watch them go, too distracted by the music and the bodies on the floor and the slight commotion when the girl realizes her drink’s been knocked over.

“Just want to talk,” he says, pushing the little fucker into the bathroom and then kicking the door shut behind them. It stinks in here, half the patrons missing the urinals even on the best of days, but it’s empty for now. That’s all he needs.

The garbage masquerading as a human shakes him off, tugs down his shirt and blusters like he’s the one in control. He figures this kid uses drugs because force doesn’t work, because he likes to pretend like the girls want him, because he’s secretly scared that they’d be able to fight back otherwise. He knows what he looks like to this little fucker: a black t-shirt just baggy enough to hide the shape of a gun holstered at his back, workman’s jeans and old black boots, the dark circles under his eyes and the half-shaved stubble he’s never dedicated enough to be rid of. He looks _dangerous_ , and this piece of shit is afraid of that, afraid of being hurt, because he’s never stopped to think about the hurt he leaves behind when he pours something into someone else’s drink.

“I’ve got friends here,” the little fucker tries, pale with the realization that things aren’t going his way, “and they’ll notice when I’m not back.”

“No, you don’t. Christopher McNeely, twenty-six, alumni of Michigan State. You’re a spartan, but you were never one of the big men on campus, were you? Never smart enough to be a grad student, never good enough at sports to even dream of getting recruited. Did you pretend like you were them? Did it make you feel big?” He leans back against the door and doesn’t budge when someone tries to push their way in. After a few more seconds of shoving, they leave.

The little fucker is grey now, hyperventilating as he gropes for his phone. Not that it matters. He’d disabled its ability to call, bricked it completely once he had the information he wanted, so it’s useless now. Maybe it’ll get thrown at his head. That would be novel.

“What do you want? Is it—Do you want money? Look, I’ve only got a couple hundred on me, but—”

He moves, tactical baton unfolding as it whistles through the air. The first thing he does is crush the stupid fucker’s windpipe, preventing the scream that wants to gurgle out as he crushes the fine bones in his stupid hand next. The arm, the elbow, the other elbow, bone crunching under his blows as he metes out punishment with brutal precision. One knee pops backwards when he stomps on it. The tip of his baton comes back oozing when it whips into the fucker’s eye a little too hard.

It only takes four minutes to beat Christopher McNeely to death, and that’s three minutes too long by his estimation. No one else has come in though, so he’s free to take his time. He rinses the tactical baton off in the sink, wets a paper towel and dabs the worst of the blood off his face and chest, scrubs his hands until the water comes out clear.

He walks out of the bathroom feeling lighter, knowing that it won’t actually help. Nothing helps anymore. But at least that’s one less rapist in the world, and that’s all he can bring himself to care about these days.


	2. [WINTER]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more focus on addiction and a lot more unhealthy coping mechanisms in this one. But at least Aiden's got a friend now!

The slim, slender man pressing up against him isn’t his type, but he’s not sure that he has a type anymore. The kid’s fingers are delicate, lithe, pianist’s hands that worm their way up under his shirt as he smooths his palms over the round, soft curve of an ass trapped in jeans probably two sizes too small. He doesn’t fuck twinks, or didn’t fuck twinks, or never wanted to fuck twinks, but at least twinks look too young and too fragile for him to hurt without thinking.

He opens his mouth into a kiss, drives his tongue into a too-eager mouth, squeezes just to hear the man moan and rock up against him, and he takes a kind of comfort in the fact that he can still do _that_ much. Hasn’t been able to touch himself in weeks but he can still grope someone looking barely legal in a bar that at least makes an attempt at checking IDs. He already knows what will happen when he wants to leave though—knows, with the bitter taste of experience, exactly how this kid’s face will fall when he backs off, cuts the party short, goes cold when he was running hot seconds before. He’s a fucking _tease_ now and he doesn’t know how to stop.

Just once, he wants someone to chase him and demand he stick around. But that’s a pipe dream. He’d kill anyone who tried.

Damien haunts him in a way that he hadn’t after Chicago, stalks through his dreams and leaves a whisper-soft touch on his skin when he wakes. He can’t shake the way Damien used to call him his _boy_ , can’t get the word ‘partner’ out of his head, and maybe that’s the other reason why he keeps finding twinks to work up and then abandon: they’re never old enough to pretend like it’s _Damien_ , no matter how blue-eyed, no matter how smug.

Everything flips over from just enough to too much, as tediously predictable as he’s always found it to be, and he gently extracts himself from the grabbing hands and whining voice pleading with him to stick around. He doesn’t snap the kid’s neck, doesn’t twist an arm behind him and pin him against a surface to teach him not to play with fire, doesn’t do anything more than make apologetic noises as he escapes the bar that had become too stifling between one heartbeat and the next.

He lights up as he walks out and thinks about wanting it. Thinks about how he used to fantasize about rough hands on his thighs. Remembers the game of cat and mouse he’d played with Damien before finally letting himself get caught. He’d been so deep in the closet that he hadn’t ever looked at the men he’d fucked in bathrooms but he’d let Damien draw him in anyways, craving the chance to let a man watch him and really _see_ him for once. The want that thrums through him is equal parts lust and revulsion, the idea of pinning someone down filling him with dread even as he runs from the thought of being pinned down himself. At best, he’s managed a handjob that he can’t bear to have reciprocated and he fucking _knows_ what people think of him, knows exactly what kind of impression he leaves, but he can’t stop doing this again and again and again.

There’s a woman walking ahead of him, heels beating out a sharp tempo on the pavement. He takes a long drag on his cigarette and blows the smoke away, tries not to look like he’s following her even though that’s exactly what he’s doing. She’s flagged in ctOS for some reason, and maybe half the time it’s wrong about potential victims but that’s still fifty-fifty odds that she’ll get hurt tonight without him there. 

Damien whispers about breakable things in his ear and he lights another cigarette, walks thirty feet behind her, watches other people on the road instead of the shape of her back as she stalks home. Probably home. Maybe the train station instead, since they’re heading the right direction for that. Once they’re someplace with lots of light and a few cameras, he’ll break off, head back to his hotel room, bury himself in code and the financials of crime lords and maybe think about sleeping once the sun comes up. He doesn’t want to scare her. He knows what this looks like.

A man steps out of an alcove ahead of him, walks a bare couple yards behind her. He stretches his legs out, quickens his pace with a ground eating stride that looks deceptively slow.

He knows what ctOS would be telling him if he looked at his phone again. There would be a percentage, steadily ticking upwards, calculated using historical data from the area and behavioral records for the suspected perp. It wasn’t always right, wasn’t right enough for him to rely on it without proof, but he can see the proof right in front of his eyes, the way the man pushes a hand into his coat pocket, the way the woman walks faster while trying not to look like she’s running.

“Turn around, bitch,” the man says as he pulls his gun out. There isn’t a chance for him to say anything else.

He breaks the man’s wrist first, the weighted tip of his tactical baton crushing the delicate bones there, one booted foot kicking the gun away when it hits the sidewalk. No time to check if the woman is smart enough to bolt, not when he’s focused on kicking this guy’s legs out from underneath him, pinning him to the ground with his own gun so temptingly close. He doesn’t give in to impulse, resists the urge to shoot even though he’s pretty sure this fucker deserves it.

She’s still standing there when he gets back up, clutching her purse tight and staring at him like he’s grown another head. Without meeting her eyes, he folds the baton back up, glances down at his phone—threat neutralized, ctOS’s alert gone now that the probabilities had come and gone—and starts to walk away.

“I thought you were going to hurt me,” she says, unmoving.

He could have, he doesn’t tell her. He could have hurt her if he wanted to, could have hunted her down with more precision than this mediocre predator crying over his broken wrist, could have done to her what he keeps doing to other men in the hopes of quieting the ghosts in his head. Damien’s always lurking behind him and no amount of cigarette smoke can burn away the smell of his cologne. He says, “Smart of you not to run. Next time someone points a gun at you, shove their hand up—they won’t be expecting it and you’re not risking a gut wound that way.”

Her dark skin pales at the knuckles when she tightens her grip on her purse but she still doesn’t run. Instead she asks, slow and careful, “I was going to get something hot to drink before heading to the train station. Do you want to join me?”

What the fuck must he look like for her to ask that? He hasn’t been sleeping, hasn’t found another dealer peddling prescription drugs, hasn’t drunk himself into a stupor despite the way he desperately wants to, so the circles under his eye must be… intense. Forgot to shave this evening, deigned to pull on a worn-down hoodie in acknowledgement of the cold because leather was still too heavy to tolerate, at least has clean clothes and clean skin because he can’t go more than two days without showering now but—still. He can’t look good.

“Sure,” he says, not entirely sure why he says it, and he stalks at her heels like a feral dog when she starts walking again.

When he was younger, he used to pretend with girls. The Lord gave good Catholic girls assholes so they could save themselves for marriage and the Lord gave him the ability to fuck doggy style so he could pretend like he’d never seen a girl from the front anyways. It never worked, never really stuck, between the too soft skin and too long hair, but he pretended for long enough that everyone looked away and not even Nicky suspected in the end. Used to pretend with girls and figured out all the right things to talk about for pretending and then made sure not to step foot in a house of God once he figured out that he’d burn for it.

Still, she’s an attractive enough woman. He doesn’t say that, or anything else, until they’re facing each other in a plastic booth at an all night diner, maybe thirty feet from the stairs to the station. He’s got coffee, black, and she’s got coffee, two packets of sugar and a tiny cup of cream. Her knuckles aren’t pale anymore when she wraps her fingers around the mug.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without the jacket,” she says, voice soft. “You never actually gave me your name, but I saw the news broadcasts after the—after.”

His head hurts. He tries to remember where he’s seen her before, because she’s pretty and she clearly recognizes him, but it’s a struggle. Whatever she sees in his face makes her soften a little, one hand reaching out to touch his wrist. The urge to yank away, to slam her into the table for having the gall to touch him wells up, but he quells it like he’s quelled so many of his violent impulses.

“I guess I never gave you my name either. It’s Donna. You knew me as—”

“Poppy,” he says, finally grasping the name that he’d been hunting for, the memory that matches the face in front of him. Without the piercings, with her hair grown out over the QR code tattooed on her neck, with some meat on her bones now that she’s not being force fed drugs to keep her compliant she looks—better. Different. Not like the terrified woman who tried to stab him once.

She flinches at the name, ever so slightly, but guilt curdles in his gut anyways. He should know better than to say that out loud, knows enough about survivors and victims to steer clear of the obvious pitfalls, shouldn’t remind her of the things she clearly wants to forget.

“You look good,” he tries again, grasping for the straws of a normal human conversation. All he’s talked about for years now is fighting or fucking, threats or flirtations, reeling people in with bait and then turning them into a fine paste on unclean bathroom tiles. “You look better. Long hair suits you.”

The smile she gives him is a little too tight. “I’ve been clean for two years now. It’s… Things are getting better. My cousin let me come out here, live with her for a bit. I have my own apartment again. There’s a couple nonprofits in the area and I’m good with money so I’ve been keeping busy.”

“Yeah? That’s good.” Christ, he’s bad at this. Somewhere along the line he forgot how to be a person, and he can’t even lay that one at anyone’s feet but his own. With Clara dead, Nicky and Jackson gone, Jordi in the wind, and T-Bone off doing his own thing again, he just stopped talking to people. It got worse over the last couple months but he sowed the seeds years ago the moment he drove away from Chicago and never looked back.

Donna watches him, running her thumb over the rim of the mug again and again. He doesn’t meet her stare directly but focuses on something just past her head instead—it’s a trick he learned as a kid, a way to look like he’s paying attention without the irritating demands of eye contact. It means he can see the moment she makes a decision, the moment her thoughtful gaze goes steely. She’s not afraid of him anymore.

“Do you have a place to stay?” she asks, and the shock of that throws him off so badly that he stammers out something unintelligible in response.

“Uh, a motel,” he manages the second time around, thoughts scrambling faster than they have in weeks. He’s been so focused on outrunning his demons that he’s never stopped to think, but he’s thinking now, weighing every possible outcome, trying to figure out what set this series of events into motion.

“You could stay with me while you’re in town.” She sips at her coffee, stares him down with the same steadiness that let her take a knife to him once upon a time. “You look like you could use the rest, and my couch is comfortable. And I never got a chance to thank you.”

“I don’t want to put you out,” he says, still trying to figure out why she’s offering in the first place. He’s dangerous, not just as a person but also as a reputation, and she has to know the kind of risk he carries with him. “I’m not going to be around for much longer anyways.”

“No point in you spending money,” she says, her curls a dark halo around her lovely face. “I could use the company.”

He doesn’t know how to answer that. It’s clear that she’s not just offering to be polite and he thinks she might actually follow him back to the motel if he tries to escape. Poppy might have been afraid but she’d been _brave_ too, unwilling to leave the rest of the girls behind, taking the risk that she wouldn’t be free because they had been too important to abandon. Donna, years later and less haunted by the things planned for her, is braver still.

She hadn’t flinched when that man had followed her, hadn’t flinched when he raised a gun. That, more than anything else, decides him.

“I need to go back and get my stuff,” he says, pulling his phone out with fingers that feel inexplicably clumsy. “Give me your address and I’ll show up in a couple hours.”

* * *

The couch is comfortable. He still can’t sleep.

Donna watches him with an inscrutable look in her eyes but she doesn’t ask him about the nightmares or the way he bristles with hostility whenever people get too close. A couple days turns into a week and he goes grocery shopping with her, buys a carton of grievously overpriced cigarettes and sits through a lecture about the health of his lungs on the ride back, neither of them looking too hard at the junkie snoozing off the comedown in a corner of the train.

Two years clean is both an eternity and no time at all. He gets that. She has her own quirks, a rigid set of invisible armor that she dons every morning before heading out, a self-confidence that defies anyone to put a label on her. It turns out that she’s _really_ good with numbers, good enough to work at a firm that audits the nonprofits in the area, good enough to volunteer on the boards of two that have no business ties to the firm she works with. A good life.

She sets a bottle of ibuprofen in front of him one evening, when he’s curled in on himself with his palms digging into his temples, the ever-present headache roaring to life for reasons he can’t explain. It’s just ibuprofen. Nothing else.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you don’t need to be sitting on the couch miserable all night,” she says, gently moving his laptop out of the way before sitting down herself. There’s a book in her hands, something to do with spies by the cover, and a look on her face like she won’t be moved.

“Concussion,” he grits out, fumbling the bottle open and swallowing two pills dry. She gives him another disapproving look but she doesn’t make him get water to force them the rest of the way down. He sticks to coffee, some blonde roast that’s too light on his tongue by half, and tries not to move his head too much.

“From the night we met?” She frowns at him, looking him over critically. Her schooling is in finance but she’s a hemophiliac, has to know enough first aid to handle herself much less him. No bruises visible and at this angle, the pale scar under his hair isn’t shining.

“A couple months ago.” He pushes his fingers against his eyelids, trying to force the headache back into something manageable again. “Job went bad. Took a bottle to the head. Post-concussion syndrome is a bitch.”

“That’s a long time to have symptoms,” and there’s no hiding the concern in her voice now. If she didn’t know who he was, know exactly what would happen if he walked into an emergency room, he’s pretty sure that she’d be marching him out the door. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He tries to make a noise of affirmation but it catches somewhere halfway out of his throat, turns into a low groan of despair instead. Sleep won’t come no matter how much he reaches for it and he _can’t_ trust himself with the benzos again, can’t trust himself to stick to a proper dose instead of downing the whole bottle in the hopes of never waking up. It’s been a long time coming, this slow spiral to rock bottom, but it’s not any better for how expected it was. He’s so fucking tired all the time.

He can’t stop thinking about Damien and the hands that weren’t his leaving bruises on his skin.

“I’ll be fine,” he says, voice low and rough and aching for a cigarette. It’s a mantra he repeats because the other option, the one where he isn’t, won’t stand. Just because he wants to die doesn’t mean he’ll allow himself to, the self-loathing and spite driving him to live stronger than any other earthly ties. He doesn’t fucking _deserve_ to rest. “I’m just—”

Tired, he doesn’t say, but her warm hand rests over his shoulder anyways, smooths over his back with a tenderness that is both crushingly intimate and wonderfully nonsexual. She doesn’t want him. He doesn’t want her. That, more than anything else, lets him lean into it, a hand he can’t hate because of the woman it’s attached to.

“I knew someone once,” he says, before she can offer any advice or, god forbid, comfort, “back in Chicago. She’s the one that led me to you. I needed an identity to get into the auction, and she found someone that was a big enough piece of shit that he needed to be taken out.”

Donna makes a sound like she wants him to continue, rests her book on the table and keeps running her hand down his back. If he’s shaking, he doesn’t want to know.

“They told Crispin that his habits would put a target on Lucky so that’s why they wanted to hand off his invitation with a girl they could afford to miss. I should’ve realized then that they had me figured out, but I was—distracted. Busy. My sister was kidnapped and I _needed_ to be at that auction.”

“You could have left me behind,” she says, thumb dragging over the sharp edge of his shoulderblade. He’s lost weight. Needs to be eating more, even if eating is a misery. “They expected you to, you know. Crispin either ate his girls or he left them behind for someone else to finish. He never—We knew what he was like. What he did.”

He laughs, harsh and grating, then regrets it when his headache surges in force. “I _couldn’t_ though. Not in a place like that. And she was—she wasn’t comfortable with death or killing, but it was the one time she could understand the necessity, the one time she thought something good had come of all this. If my niece hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have killed Crispin, and we wouldn’t have rescued you.”

Beside him, she shudders, and he regrets that too. He should shut up, stop talking, stop dredging up those memories for her, but it’s like a sickness that he can’t stop purging, puking the words out without thinking. Once upon a time, he’d buried Clara’s death deep in his heart and moved on, but he can’t stop fucking thinking about Chicago now. He can’t peel Damien out of the thing that broke him and he keeps talking because he wants—

“She’s dead. She sold me out, didn’t realize what that would mean, then regretted it. I found out and she—She kept trying to atone for something that wasn’t really her fault in the end. She didn’t pull the trigger. On a long fucking list of people who killed Lena, she was at the bottom. But she’s the one that took the fall anyways, and I miss her so fucking much. I keep wondering what it is about me that kills everyone I’m close with and then wondering when that bullet’s going to hit you too.”

“You’ve stopped me from taking a bullet twice now,” Donna says, squeezing his shoulder. The extra pressure is almost enough to make him jerk up swinging, but he catches himself just in time. She still notices. “Something happened between now and then. Is it because of your friend?”

“It’s not,” he bites the word off, swallows the bile that fills his throat.

“Something else then.” There’s a horrible sort of understanding in her voice and he wonders how many other girls she saw through it the first time. The South Chicago Club doped its girls up and then sold them off within a year or two, but that just meant they had a constant cycle of them coming through. He’s never asked how long they had her.

“I don’t know how long I’m going to stick around.” Hadn’t meant to stay for a week but now that he’s entrenched here, he’s too tired to move on again. His habit of nightly roaming slipped out of his grasp when he was still dancing around the rules of propriety for sleeping on her couch and now he can’t work up the motivation to go hunting. Maybe that’s for the best. He’d get caught faster if he did.

“Stay as long as you need,” she says, finally pulling her hand away and reaching for her book instead. “It’s nice to have some company for once.”

* * *

It ends up being two months, three weeks, and one day before he stumbles over a lead that’s so big he can’t ignore it. He doesn’t leave in the middle of the night, but he does spring it on Donna without warning, not giving her enough time to form an argument to keep him there. If he gave her the time, she’d figure something out—he knows what he’s like and he realizes that there’s a Nicky-Lena-Clara shaped hole in his chest that he’s trying to fit her into.

She still grabs his arm as he shrugs the bag over his shoulder, wearing his jacket because it’s too cold not to, and she still tugs him back before he can fully get out the door.

“You know how to find me,” Donna says, fire in her eyes and steel in her spine. “You’d better not forget it. I expect to see you again next year, do you understand?”

It’s a promise. He’s been told to stop making promises, but he doesn’t stop himself from making this one.


	3. [SPRING I]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter count hopped up because I realized this works better split into two. Depending on how quickly I can write the last chapter, you might see the second half of this one in the next couple days.

The headache comes and goes. Right now it’s gone and in the absence of the dull throbbing, he looks around and considers that maybe he’s not dealing with his ghosts as well as he should be.

Not that beating the absolute fucking shit out of criminals has ever been a healthy way of dealing, but he used to have some moderation. Used to make a play at non-lethality, breaking knees and arms and sometimes skulls but with the vague consideration that crippled was still better than dead. He’d slipped in and out of compounds and gang territories, used ctOS to his advantage, threaded a suppressor onto the barrel of his pistol and sniped men quiet enough that no one caught on. There used to be subtlety in him.

The thing he’s done here is not subtle.

His bombs and bullets have left their mark, concrete pocked and cratered, a warzone condensed into a single warehouse. But it’s the evidence that he beat men into submission and then came back to execute them that unnerves him—it’s warm enough to go without a jacket again so he leaves the stifling leather tucked in the bottom of his bag, and it’s not like he cares if they know the Vigilante visited. There wasn’t a good reason for him to kill them, one by one, putting bullets in their heads like he was cleaning house. He could have left some of the lower down grunts alive.

Then again, they chopped up the girls that didn’t sell well. Domestic workers, not sex slavery, but it all shakes out to the same in the end—he knows what goes on behind closed doors in the homes of those people wealthy enough to traffick women in to cook and clean. The way this gang handled cast-offs is just another unpleasant footnote on the whole fucking industry.

He needs to clean this up somehow. Usually he leaves that up to the gangs in question, but he’s managed to wipe this one off the map. The ground floor of the warehouse is the worst, the offices up top splattered with blood from only a few corpses, the basement level water access already burning with greasy oil fire from the boats he bombed to cut off escape routes. It’s mostly concrete and steel though, not enough drywall and wood for a clean burn. Fuck. If he leaves this for the cops, will that cause problems down the line?

“Ho-lee shit, Pearce,” comes a voice that doesn’t belong and his gun is up and aimed before he’s even aware that he’s moving.

Jordi doesn’t even have the decency to look afraid. His gaze tracks over the bodies with something close to appreciation instead, a pistol held loose and easy in one hand. Pointed at the floor.

He lowers his own gun, the jittery need to move and finish this up burrowing under his skin. Jordi looks filled out, a little broader in the chest than he’d been back in Chicago—getting older, part of him whispers, just like you—a new white suit and black as pitch shirt still clean and pressed. Of course they are. It’s not like Jordi’s been here, getting himself dirty, forcing men onto their broken knees and then gunning them down before they can finish begging.

Not that Jordi ever gets dirty, not really. Gun smoke and copper might cling to his suit and mark him with scent, but he’s never looked anything less than perfectly put together. It’s part of the image. Jordi Chin, king of fixers, eccentric and expensive because he always gets the job done.

This is a very ugly display that Jordi’s walked into. He clenches his teeth, bites back the first thing that comes to mind, and finally asks, “What do you want, Jordi?”

“Jesus, you’re prickly today,” Jordi says, like they didn’t try to kill each other on a lighthouse once, like this was a normal place for them to meet. “I _was_ coming to do a messy execution of the guy running this joint because he’s pissed off some real power players, but you’ve certainly taken care of _that_ , haven’t you? Whatever. I’ll collect on it anyway, say I subcontracted or something.”

“Great. Glad to hear it. Does that mean you’re cleaning this up for me?” The urge to pull the trigger and see where it gets him grows overwhelming, so he flicks the safety and tucks it into the holster at his back instead. He wants to throw a punch. He wants a repeat of Chicago. He wants something he can’t even put a name to, buried somewhere between the miserable nights at gay bars and the brutal clarity of hunting other predators in straight ones.

Jordi isn’t Damien either, but the calluses on his hands match the ones that never stop touching him.

With a bark of laughter, Jordi shakes his head, hands dancing a complicated pantomime as he starts walking back towards the exit. “Fuck no! No, this actually serves my purposes pretty well—see, my guy wanted this to be public, to be _showy_ , really send a message, you dig? And man, is there any message louder than this one? Get fucked or I’ll burn your whole fucking house down. It’s great!”

It’s not great, he doesn’t say, following silently instead. None of this is great. He keeps losing time and coming back to himself in moments of pure violence, the little amount of peace he’d gotten at Donna’s apartment so far gone that it might as well be a dream. A good dream, not the kind of dream that haunts him and sinks its teeth in until he can’t fucking sleep anymore.

He’s so tired that he’s stopped being tired, no longer feels the way exhaustion weighs him down. The delirium is catching up, making things a little wobbly even though his concussion symptoms have finally started clearing, but the dull ache in his bones is just—whatever. He’s getting old. Kicking the drug habit fucked him over more than he thought it could but the idea of going through all the steps just to buy some goddamn valium is obnoxious enough that he doesn’t even try. Donna was two years sober and now he, apparently, was going on month six. Going sober had a hell of a fucking body count.

“— _Aiden_ , for fuck’s sake,” Jordi says, snapping fingers in front of his face. He reacts on instinct, goes for the kill before remembering why attacking Jordi is a bad fucking idea, and ends up pinned to the ground with one arm twisted up behind his back.

Hasn’t let anyone do that since—

“Get off,” he says, doing his best not to hyperventilate even as adrenaline hits him so hard that he’s shaking with it. If he pukes while face down on the ground he’s going to aspirate, he knows that, so he really needs to _not fucking throw up_ while pinned against the asphalt of the parking lot. Damien’s hands are holding him against the gravel and glass of the car wreck and he’s already choking on bile by the time Jordi lets go.

“You’re a fucking headcase, you know that?” Jordi says sourly, rocking back on his heels as something explodes in the warehouse behind them. “Are you high right now? Is that what’s happening?”

“God, I _wish_ ,” he gasps before heaving, just barely missing his own arm. Christ. Had he eaten anything today? Apparently not. At least, not anything recently enough to still be in his stomach.

It takes a couple minutes for him to stop and the headache is back in full force once he’s done. He digs around in his back pocket, yanks a cigarette out of the pack with more viciousness than necessary, lights it with hands that still tremble despite the way he forces himself to even out again. It’s fine. He’s fine. Has to be fine because there’s work to do and he really doesn’t want a fucking audience for this.

The crunch of gravel under dress shoes alerts him to Jordi’s movement. He doesn’t attack this time, even when Jordi plucks the cigarette out from between his teeth and chucks it across the parking lot with a look of distaste. There’s still three more in the pack, so he’ll manage somehow.

“Okay, well, I’m buying you dinner apparently,” Jordi says, grabbing the back of his shirt and hauling him up like a recalcitrant kitten. He doesn’t hiss and spit but he wants to, chooses instead to settle for shaking Jordi’s grip off the moment they reach his car. The junker he drove has nothing identifying in it, so he leaves it behind without a moment’s hesitation.

“I don’t need dinner.” Rather, he’s not sure he can keep down dinner, not after the violent episode he just had. He can feel the crack of a bottle against his skull, can feel the hands on his arms and the knee on his chest, can hear Damien’s whisper-soft _my boy_ over and over and over again. Food is a dangerous prospect right now.

“Like hell you don’t, Aiden. You did me a solid here, so I’m buying you dinner. Shut up and take a gift horse without checking its teeth first.” Jordi tosses him the keys over the roof of the car, climbing into the passenger’s seat and getting comfortable.

“That’s not how the saying goes,” he mutters, dumping the gun and mostly empty duffel bag in the back seat. Without the explosives or the ammo, it’s much lighter; his laptop and his clothes don’t weigh much. He hadn’t been planning on staying in town after this. It occurs to him, as he climbs into the driver’s seat, that he’s heard his name twice now. Two more times than usual. “Why are you using my first name? Have I been upgraded?”

Jordi snorts. “I said your last name like twelve times and you didn’t even hear me. Until further notice, we’re on first name basis—not that it fucking matters to _you_ , rude ass. Pick a place to eat, I’m hungry and you need something other than nicotine to keep you going.”

He doesn’t have a good response for that so he stays silent and drives. Being Aiden again fits uncomfortably, the way his jacket doesn’t fit right anymore. He’s been a jagged mess of violent instincts for too long, been just the Vigilante for longer than that, and even Donna avoided names with him, knowing what she did about ctOS and Blume. Not even Damien calls him by name, sticks to boy or partner when he holds Aiden down in his nightmares, and he can’t tell if he’s feeling trapped by a fucking name or if it’s something else that eats at him.

Donna always stopped at the diner when she worked late and usually she asked him to meet her there. He parks outside a Waffle House as the next best thing, craving coffee and something greasy to tide him over and bandage up the gaping wound in his heart. Jordi isn’t Donna, at all, but he’s not Damien either—right now, that’s the best Aiden can ask for.

Jordi gets waffles and enters negotiations with the cook over the way the stack is set up. It’s a protracted discussion that ends up with an extra two twenties sitting on the counter and a smug smile on Jordi’s face. He sticks to coffee and a sausage melt, ignores the way Jordi asks for his hashbrowns to be smothered, chunked, diced, peppered, capped, and misses Donna’s simple eggs and bacon instead. He’s remembering why Jordi is so exhausting to be around.

Maybe he should go back. He craves the tenuous stability he’d built in that city, the way he’d had someone else in the apartment to distract him from his own head. This had been too important to leave hanging but now he’s done, sick to death of running again.

Jordi kicks him under the table and he hisses in outrage more than pain. “What the fuck, Jordi?”

“You weren’t listening,” Jordi says, unrepentant as he dumps way too much fucking creamer into his coffee. “Like I was _saying_ , you clearly aren’t staying anywhere for the night so I’m taking you back to my hotel with me.”

“Why?” He can’t hide the wariness or the hostility in his voice and he doesn’t even try. Donna had been safely nonthreatening, a victim that wasn’t anymore, a port in a storm because he could trust that she had no interest in stabbing him again. Jordi isn’t nearly so sure a bet. Jordi is another predator, and that has Aiden’s hackles up.

“Uh, because the homeless-chic thing is super two thousand and late by now? Plus we took my car here. And I’ve got a job that you can help me with, given how you stopped making payments like three years ago and I _didn’t_ hunt you down to get my money. What’s the point of an installment plan if you don’t make installments, I ask you?”

“I didn’t realize that bank account was empty,” he says, trying to remember how much money he’d left in it. Enough to cover Jordi’s retainer fee and extras. Payments should have kept going on time.

“Try _seized_ , dipshit. Or did you forget that you became Chicago’s most wanted for a hot second there?” Jordi’s eyebrows fly up, like he’s surprised by how stupid Aiden is, and he gestures broadly at the invisble specter of the FBI.

The cook isn’t listening to them as far as he can tell, but it makes Aiden antsy anyways. Everything about this has him antsy, between Jordi’s insistence on using his name and the way he was tucked into a booth at an otherwise empty restaurant, evidence of his slaughter just starting to rise into the evening sky. No fire trucks yet but the column of smoke won’t go unnoticed for long.

This is stupid. Sitting here risking the cops catching up because he can’t fucking control himself is the stupidest thing he’s done today. The urge to get up and run spills through him like an oil slick, pools in his feet until his leg is bouncing and his gut clenches. Not like he’s going to eat anyways. Might as well just—

He tries to stand and gets his leg yanked out from under him, hits the plasticky seat with a grunt as Jordi’s ankle hooks around his own. There’s a look in Jordi’s eyes like he’ll chase Aiden down if he tries to get up again and he jitters at the idea of being hunted. He’s gotten used to being the hunter instead.

“Look—” he starts to say through gritted teeth, but he’s cut off by the arrival of their food. His sandwich. Jordi’s hashbrowns and what appears to be a stack of alternating waffles, looking more like an elaborate layering scheme than anything else.

“Eat your fucking sausage melt, Aiden,” Jordi says, his leg still hooked around Aiden’s own. “No one’s gonna come looking for you at the goddamn Waffle House. You fucking owe me, so you can handle sharing a hotel room with the big scary bisexual for a night.”

Whatever response he has to that is derailed entirely. Jordi is—Jordi _isn’t_ , can’t be, reeks of the masculine power and money and control that never shows up in the dingy bathrooms Aiden visits. He’s never heard a whisper about it and he _would_ have, knows the way fixers gossip relentlessly. There’s a reason he and Damien kept things quiet, a reason why Damien’s fond, possessive _my boy_ fills him with dread when others can hear it, a reason why he never lets himself be seen by people who matter.

His expression must reflect some degree of his confusion. Jordi rolls his eyes, exasperated and irritated all at once, and says, “Jesus, you are fucking dense sometimes. _Why_ do you think people call me ‘eccentric’, you dunce? It’s not a fucking compliment.”

“You wear suits all the time,” he says, numb with realization that there’s a whole world of hidden messages that he’s missed. Fuck. Who else knows? Does anyone know about _him_? Was that why he’d—

Jordi starts laughing, a mean snicker at first that turns into a whooping wheeze, one hand pressed to his gut. There are tears in his eyes when he finally straightens, shoulders still shaking as he tries to get himself under control. “You fucking—The suits? You thought it was the suits?”

He sits there, stiff and uncertain, crushing the stupid sandwich and wishing he could just get up and leave. It feels like he’s stepped sideways into a reality where everything happened different and he hates that, hates the off-balance feeling of it that he’d finally lost a bare few weeks ago. A dull throb starts in his temples but it’s as likely a stress headache as the lingering effects of his concussion—it still centers on that pale scar he knows Jordi can’t see, reverberates behind his eyes and makes him wonder how it would feel to pick up his plate and bring it down on Jordi’s head instead.

“You wear them all the time,” he snaps, trying to untangle their legs. Jordi doesn’t let him. “It’s weird, Jordi.”

“You really are just the straightest man alive, aren’t you?” Jordi’s voice is gleeful, taunting, his hands dancing through obscene gestures before he finally settles down and starts cutting up his waffles.

Aiden doesn’t respond, hates being himself, hates Jordi for dragging him into this conversation in the first place. There’s nothing he can fucking say to it either—he’s been careful, so careful, always careful becuase the other option led to a very messy death, and now all the carefulness comes back to bite him. If there’s any comfort to be had, and that is a very big _if_ , it’s that at least he knows now that he’s safe. No one suspects. Jordi might be eccentric and brilliant and queer, but he’s just a violent mess and a good driver.

He can’t stand the way Jordi takes this as an excuse to tease though. The leg hooked around his own, keeping him trapped, the salacious way Jordi eats a bite of waffles and then waggles his eyebrows—it’s aggravating, infuriating, both because of the assumptions behind it and the—touch. He’s tired of being touched. He came with Jordi because once, they might have been something approaching friends, but he’s sick to _death_ of being touched.

“How many are there?” he asks when Jordi finally lets him up and slaps more cash on the table as they leave. The waffle stack had met with approval, apparently. When it gets him a curious look, he glances away and heads for the car. “‘Eccentric’ fixers.”

“Jesus christ, Aiden, just say ‘queer’. Or gay or fucking whatever, stop being a baby about it.” Jordi slides into the passenger seat, pulling up the hotel address on the car’s GPS.

“Fine. How many?” He’s trying to remember other fixers in his old network, the complicated web of rumor and word of mouth, reputations both good and bad. None come to mind immediately, his memories burdened with facts alone. Hackers, thieves, murderers, clean up crew, he knows all the specifics of their jobs and very little about them as people. It’s never seemed important before now.

“Well I’m not going to fucking name names, asshole.” Jordi leans back, folding his arms under his head and squinting as he thinks. “Let’s see… there’s that lesbian couple, love them, one of my favorite doctors, a few information brokers, I’m assuming the hacker scene if full of ‘em based on the ones I’ve met… I mean, we’re fucking everywhere? You know that, right?”

He does. He didn’t. His head aches and he swallows down the directionless rage that wants him to twist the wheel and slam the car into a concrete barrier. After so many years of hiding it, he finds out that so many people _haven’t_ and he wants, needs, hates to be one of them. Thinks about hands on his thighs and what else he can’t bring himself to want anymore.

“I’m actually kind of surprised, everyone figured you knew Damien was a slut,” Jordi says casually, buckled in so he won’t go flying through the windshield if Aiden loses the control he’s barely clinging to. “I mean, he fucked a _lot_ of guys. So many of them. Girls too, but man, I did not realize you were that blind.”

Damien whispers _my boy_ in his ears right as the GPS helpfully dings that they’ve reached their destination and he slams on the brakes, yanks the wheel sideways, drifts into the parking garage like it’s a race.

“Wow okay, touchy,” Jordi says, half-sprawled against his door and looking pissed off. He doesn’t apologize. Just parks in the first spot he can find, scrambles out of the car and grabs his bag, digs out a cigarette and lights it as he stalks towards the hotel entrance. He can hear Jordi calling out but he doesn’t _fucking_ care anymore because Damien knew and never told and now Aiden can’t get him out of his fucking head and he _knew_ , why did he let him _think he was alone_.

Like every building ever now, the hotel doesn’t allow smoking inside. He stops just outside the doors, manages to stay still for a bare couple of seconds before he starts pacing in tight, furious circles. Jordi catches up less than a minute later, the annoyance on his face rapidly turning to genuine anger.

Good, Aiden thinks, viciously grinding the butt of his cigarette under one heel.

“You’re being a real fucking asshole today, you know that?” Jordi snaps, swiping his room card and letting them in. His shoulders bristle with affront and wounded pride, the white suit jacket stretching over them in a way that Aiden wants to touch and he—doesn’t. Knows that he’s as likely to swing a fist as to stroke a hand down Jordi’s spine, knows that the thing that might be attraction is just as likely to be violence instead, knows that Jordi’s so pissed off that any touch would be an attack.

He itches to touch anyways. He’s furious and hurting and wants to hurt on the outside, wants something he can funnel the rage into, wonders just how Jordi would take it if Aiden tried to kiss him. Would he think it was a joke? Would he throw the first punch instead, give Aiden another turn at having a black eye, break his ribs just to teach him a lesson?

The need to know _burns_ to the low whisper of Damien’s voice in his ears and he follows Jordi up the elevators to the room, marks the number on the door and memorizes it. Might not stick around but it’s good to remember just in case. His hands keep curling into fists and he forces them to uncurl again, prowls down the short hallway into the hotel room and clears the corners, behind the door, under the bed and back again, always keeping Jordi in sight.

“What the fuck, Aiden,” Jordi says, watching him with narrowed eyes. He’s still angry but the look on his face is calculating now, eyes narrowed as his hand drifts towards the pistol holstered under his jacket.

He adjusts his trajectory, grabs his bag and digs out a shirt and briefs before heading for the bathroom. Needs to do laundry, can’t forget. “I’m taking a shower.”

“Sure, just take over my bathroom I guess, it’s not like _I_ was going to use it or anything.” Jordi curls his lip, but his hand moves away from his gun and he lets Aiden go. It’s a victory, or as close to one as he can hope for; with a little extra luck, Jordi will find himself distracted by the television by the time Aiden comes out of the bathroom.

Jordi’s hotel is a nice one. The water takes no time at all to heat up, filling the room with steam as he piles his clothes on the counter. There’s a used towel slung over one hook, the fresh towels still neatly folded on the shelf—Jordi hasn’t been in town for long. He picks one at random, leaves it on the lid of the toilet, chafes his hands as he stares into a shower packed with soaps the hotel hasn’t supplied, and thinks that he’s one of the biggest fucking cowards he’s ever known.

_I met Jordi today_ , he mouths in mockery of his old audio journaling. The sound of water hitting tile drowns Damien out, lets him steal a moment of peace as he digs fingers into his scalp and scrubs shampoo into his hair, chewed down nails catching on the scar above his temple. _He wants me for a job, but I don’t know what that entails. He’s dangerous. We haven’t settled things since Chicago and if he wanted to kill me, he’d be able to_.

He doesn’t smile but his lips twitch as he mouths the last, tipping his head and shutting his eyes. Hard to hide the weight loss without his heavy sweaters and heavier jacket, so Jordi’s noticed by now. Might even be the reason he insisted on dinner, come to think of it. If they did a repeat of the lighthouse, he knows exactly how things would play out this time: him over the rail, a bullet hole in his forehead, because Jordi wouldn’t be caught off guard a second time.

_He’s eccentric_ , he narrates silently, fingers bouncing on his skin as he shifts with nervous energy. The anger is still there, boiling under the surface, but he’s got a handle on it again. _He says that’s basically the same thing as being out. He doesn’t know about me but Damien was never careful. This puts me in an awkward position and I don’t know if the risk is worth it._

No, that’s a lie. The mental tape he’s recording on get rewound, has the last couple seconds recorded over again. _I’m afraid of what he’ll say if I tell him. I feel like it’s branded on my skin and if he jokes about me being straight one more time_ —

Damien laughs, that sharp nasty snicker of his, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth, slams a fist into the wall of the shower as his stomach rolls. He’s a coward, because it’s easier to let Jordi assume and hate him for it than it is to come clean. He’s a coward, because if he tells Jordi anything, he’ll be tempted to tell him _everything_. He’s a coward, because he wants to shove a hand down Jordi’s pants and see if he’s really got a pair of brass ones down there, and he knows that he’ll snap if Jordi tries to do the same.

But if he tries to take Jordi in a fight, he’ll lose.

“Fuck,” he whispers, soft enough that it’s lost in the rush of water pounding down around him. Jordi’s getting older but he’s not _old_ yet, moves with easy grace, reaches for his gun when he’s not sure if Aiden’s going to attack. This isn’t a stranger in the bathroom of a gay bar, some innocent that crumples the second he loses control. This is Jordi, who has never been anything less than a threat.

He thinks about touching. Thinks about wanting to touch. Thinks about how easy it would be to reach out, to caress or to crush, and the fact that he’ll be on the ground again the second things turn violent. Damien’s voice whispers in his ear as gravel digs into his cheek and hands push his thighs apart and—

He makes a decision.


	4. [SPRING II]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The CNC/bad BDSM etiquette tags come into play here, so mind them. Aiden has problems disorder.

When he finally leaves the bathroom, Jordi is sprawled across the bed, no longer wearing his shoes or jacket, gaze fixed on the television. Some reality show centered around constant surveillance. He wonders if anyone watching realizes that Blume plays this concept out in hundreds of thousands of homes already.

His shirt and briefs fit uncomfortably on still damp skin, but he’s riding this surety out for as long as he can. The headache has eased, just enough that he feels like he’s thinking straight again, knowing that he probably isn’t. Despite every little thing Damien insinuates, he’s never managed to do a single thing straight in his life.

Jordi glances over at him, one eyebrow raised. His sleeves are rolled up, the first few buttons on his shirt undone, and he looks touchable in a way that makes Aiden’s palms itch. He moves before Jordi can say anything, climbs on the bed and ignores the way the embroidery on the covers catches on his skin. The fabric is cold, just like Jordi’s thigh is cold when he dares to let himself touch, one leg folded under himself, one hand braced on the mattress. His choice.

“I need you to shut up,” he says as Jordi opens his mouth, some joke or insult readying itself on his lips, “and let me say this. I’ve never done it before, so I’m what you could call _rusty_. I’m gay. I’ve always been gay.”

“The fuck you have—” Jordi starts incredulously, only cut off when Aiden raises his voice and talks over him.

“I fuck other men, I _want_ to fuck other men, and before today, you were one of the ones I thought would never want to fuck me back. The thing is, Jordi, I knew about Damien. I knew he was fucking around. I just—I never assumed that anyone else would know too. I thought I was alone. I thought it was just _us_.”

His fingers spasm against the covers, clenching and unclenching involuntarily. The frantic thud of his heartbeat in his ears almost drowns out Damien’s voice, the near-forgotten whisper of his mother’s prayers for his soul. Jordi’s eyes are narrowed, suspicious, but he hasn’t said anything, isn’t interrupting again. It’s good enough. He grabs hold of his courage, barrels onward.

“When I worked for the Club, they made it pretty clear what happens to men who step out of line the way I do. I figured out how to blend in and then I did it too well. The problem I have, Jordi, is that I want to fuck you into the mattress right now, but I think if you touched me I’d try to break your arm. I’m sick of this.” He drags in a ragged breath, reaches forward to touch the exposed skin on Jordi’s arm. “I’m sick of being like this.”

“...Huh,” Jordi says eventually, setting the remote aside. The muscles in his arm flex as he sits up straighter, but he doesn’t pull out from under Aiden’s fingers. Hasn’t thrown a punch yet, which should be good, but the lack of violence makes him antsy, furious. He needs to know Jordi won’t pull away. Needs to know that he won’t step back the moment Aiden tries to retreat, because he can’t stand the way people let him go anymore.

“If you want me to fuck off, that’s fine too.” It’s not. It’s not fine. But he says the words anyways, a false platitude for propriety’s sake, knowing that he’ll hate Jordi for being the same kind of tease _he_ is.

“Nah, that’s not what I’m thinking,” Jordi says, leaning into his space. Not touching yet, but close. “I’m trying to figure out where the lines are. I mean, this is a pretty big deal. Aiden Pearce, gay, and aaaaall these years I didn’t know! To think, we could have been fucking for ages now. Now, to be totally clear, you’re asking me to have sex with you? Are you a top, or…?”

Hands on his thighs, ruining the inarticulate longing for them that’s followed him for years. He swallows and says, “Not exclusively. And yes, I’m asking you for sex. To have sex. And to—ignore me when I try to say that I don’t want it anymore.”

Jordi’s gaze turns sharp, penetrating, predatory; he leans closer still, finally lifting a hand to cup the edge of Aiden’s jaw, his thumb just barely brushing over the stubble. “If you say ‘red’, I’ll stop. Just that simple. Sound like a plan?”

“Sounds like a plan,” he whispers, so tense he might break.

The hand on his jaw lingers, presses down harder, tips Aiden’s head up for a kiss that he wants more than words can say. Jordi’s mouth is warm and wet and impossibly gentle, his tongue pushing between Aiden’s parted lips with an ease that speaks of years doing exactly this. Jordi kisses like he has nowhere else to be, like he wants to linger here on the bed forever, like he could devour Aiden in an instant but he wants to take his time savoring instead.

It’s dizzying. It’s too much and not enough at all, leaving him feeling feverish and edgier than ever, his fingers clutching at Jordi’s other arm as he pushes the kiss further. He’s drowning in sensation and starving for it, desperate to have Jordi touching him somewhere other than his jaw, trapped and going mad from the restriction.

Not enough but still too much. He breaks off the kiss, starts to scramble back for the relative safety of the bathroom and—

Jordi moves lightning fast, his hand burying in Aiden’s hair and yanking him back. The explosion of violence catches him off guard, gives Jordi time to haul him close and pin him to the bed, his clothed body cool against Aiden’s overheated skin as the motion forces his shirt to ride up. Knees shove his thighs apart, Jordi’s other hand grabbing his wrist and slamming it against the pillows, the fist in his hair dragging his head back until his throat is exposed.

He sucks a sharp breath in through his teeth, tries to get a leg around Jordi’s hips to kick him off, digs his nails into the arm forcing him into a dramatic arch under Jordi’s heavy body. It’s useless, impossible to break free. Jordi’s grin is brilliantly white, vicious, hungry.

“Don’t—” he chokes out, right as Jordi rolls their hips together. 

It sends lightning up his spine, his cock jolting to attention as he writhes under Jordi’s ungentle touch. The bulge in Jordi’s pants grinds against him, crisp fabric dragging against the paper-thin cotton of his briefs, heavy enough and thick enough that he can almost imagine how it will feel buried inside him. Ghost hands try to rake over his skin but they can’t get a grip, not when Jordi’s body is so overwhelmingly present.

“St— Wait, Jordi, d—” He gasps, cuts himself off, stutters and stammers protests because he can’t draw in the breath for more. When he tries to buck Jordi off, the motion just rolls through them both, comes back ten times over in the hard thrust of Jordi’s clothed erection against his own. 

Jordi’s mouth is hot against his ear, beard rough as it catches on his skin, and he whispers, “You’ve got a word to make me stop, and that isn’t it, Aiden.”

His lips shape it, wrap around it, form the thought and intent of it, but it never passes from form to function. The hand in his hair is vicious, forcing his head up and back as Jordi drags teeth and tongue over his neck to leave a mark and he doesn’t say it. He yanks at the hand on his wrist, begs for Jordi to let him go, and never picks the one thing that will actually accomplish that.

Because he doesn’t want Jordi to stop. There’s a twisting, burning thing in his gut, coiling around his spine and jolting down his cock, a desperation to be used that’s chased him for months, for years, for his whole fucking life it feels like. He asked Jordi to keep him from running and Jordi does exactly that, fights him into submission as Aiden does his best to claw his way out of the situation. And it’s such a fucking relief when he _can’t_ , because he wants—

The hand in his hair stays but the one pinning his wrist lets go. The release might have been a disappointment, but even with hands free, he can’t get the leverage to throw Jordi off. His fingers tangle in the black silk of Jordi’s shirt, legs forced wide by the bulk of Jordi’s body, and he gasps a desperate plea when Jordi’s fingers dive into his underwear and wrap around his cock.

Jordi’s palm is rough but his fingers are deft, dragging precum down his shaft, curling around the head of his cock on the upstroke, the bite of a nail against his frenulum making Aiden shudder with a combination of fear and lust. Like this, Jordi could hurt him. Like this, he might just let him. And when Jordi’s wrist twists, it’s all he can do not to sob in relief as he comes in the confines of a too-tight fist.

“Look at you,” Jordi says, low and hungry. His teeth scrape over Aiden’s jaw, hand uncoiling from the stained underwear as Jordi smears come over the exposed skin on his stomach where his shirt rode up. “Look at how gorgeous you are like this. You know what I want?”

He stutters out something that might be a question, breath catching on a _real_ sob as Jordi grinds into his oversensitive skin. There’s a wetness on his cheeks that isn’t explained by Jordi’s tongue, a numbness in his fingers that might just be because he came so hard that his ears are still ringing. Jordi hasn’t stopped, has a hand curled over his hip as he ruts against the damp cloth of Aiden’s briefs, and it’s all too much for him to handle and still exactly what he needed.

Jordi’s breath is hot as he whispers, “I want to fuck you until you come again, and I want to watch you cry when I do it. I want to see you choke on my cock as I hold you down and facefuck you, knowing you can’t fight back. I want to see you _wrecked_ , Aiden, and I know I’m going to get what I want. Because you can’t _stop_ me.”

So he doesn’t.

* * *

Jordi makes a sour comment about his clothes afterwards, but he lets Aiden step into the shower first. The water is just as hot the second time around, burning like acid as he rinses off the evidence of Jordi’s hands.

Not all of it. There’s a faint bruise on his wrist and he has the image of Jordi’s lips parted as he comes burned into his brain, the stutter of his hips as he gets himself off just using the struggles of Aiden’s willing-unwilling body. It’s a better memory than most of the ones frozen like glass in his mind.

“Remind me to stop by a dry cleaner when we get to our job,” Jordi mutters as he climbs in the shower too, invading the bubble of steam and contemplation that Aiden had built up around himself. His presence is abrupt, unwelcome, intrusive in a way that his touch hadn’t been. He’d expected Jordi to wait. He’d expected Jordi to stay _out_.

His hands freeze in his hair, halfway through the process of scrubbing shampoo through it, and he forces himself to breathe. It’s almost impossible, steam rising up and choking him, the memory of Damien’s hands that weren’t his hands trying to taint the paths that Jordi had burned into him. The water is loud but not loud enough to drown out the gleeful, hateful way Damien whispers _my boy_ , and Jordi’s hand brushes his shoulder as he reaches past and— 

“Red,” he says, his voice a ruin.

There’s a long pause, the silence almost as heavy as the bodies that pin him to the gravel and glass, then Jordi says, “You know you can just ask me to stop when we’re not in a scene, right? I’ll listen to a ‘no’ or a ‘get the fuck out of here, Jordi’.”

“I know,” he lies, because he doesn’t know at all, but it feels like the thing to say. But the lie burns in his throat like acid until he changes his mind a few seconds later. “I just—I need you to not be in here. With me.”

Jordi sighs gustily, but the shower curtain rustles a moment later and his feet slap wetly on the floor as he steps out. “Just don’t take all night in there, alright? I’m not sleeping in sex sweat, that why we fucked _on_ the covers, not under them.”

“Alright.” He waits, breathless, for the sound of the door clicking shut. Then he turns the water up, until the burn is harsh enough that he can’t concentrate on anything else.

* * *

He says it again, and again, and again. Jordi rags on him too hard during the drive up and he snaps it just for a few minutes of silence. Jordi wraps an arm around him when they walk through a hotel lobby until his skin crawls and he whispers it because violence isn’t an option. Jordi asks him about a half dozen places to eat and never pauses to give him room to think until he hisses it with something close to desperation. Jordi always hesitates for a second, then deciphers whatever behavior Aiden is objecting to and changes tack.

“Use your words,” Jordi mutters when he feels Aiden go tense and hostile in the middle of the night, the shifting nightmare launching him awake in Jordi’s arms.

The magic one sits on his lips but he swallows it, shudders as he hunts for a different way to say it, finally ends up with, “I really need you to stop touching me right now.”

Jordi releases him with an aggrieved sigh, then reaches past him to flick the lamp on. It can’t be more than a few minutes past two in the morning and there’s lines on Jordi’s face, bruising under his eyes, redness in the whites that says _he_ isn’t the only one sleeping uneasy. An overwhelming sense of guilt threatens to rise up, feeding into the anxiety and rage that always bubbles under his skin. At least Donna hadn’t shared a bed with him.

“You need so much fucking therapy, it’s unreal,” Jordi says, dragging his hair out of his face as he rolls onto his back. His necklace catches the light, spills over his collarbone as he settles with his hands under his head. “Since I’m getting the feeling that you hate mental health professionals more than you hate doctors, I guess I’m stuck with you instead. Yippie.”

The guilt grows. He wavers between the desire to touch again, despite the way his skin crawls, and the pack of cigarettes sitting on the side table, which will get their nonsmoking room hit with a fee. The cigarettes win. His hands don’t shake as he lights up.

Jordi steals it from between his lips, pushes it into his own mouth and flaps a hand dismissively at the side table. “I’ll buy you another pack.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” he says, lighting another one—ten left in the pack, because he’d opened this one halfway through the drive up—and trying to decide if the combination of shame and fury outweighs the sudden surge of arousal at the sight of Jordi with a cigarette dangling between his lips. He can think of a lot of places for Jordi to put those lips. Most of them balance on that knife edge of want and revulsion.

“It fucks with your sense of taste,” Jordi says, sitting up straighter and glancing up at the smoke detector. “Since I am a hipstery, bougie, yuppie foodie at heart—lotta ‘ee’s there, that’s fun—I don’t do it much. But _you_ are a fucking contagious panic attack, you know that? I’ll take nicotine since you’re too much of a square to have weed.”

“I’m not a square,” he protests, then belatedly adds, “and I’m not a contagious panic attack.”

“Yeah? Then use your fucking words. Explain that to me. Give me the rundown.” Jordi gives him a poisonous look, the tip of his cigarette flaring orange as he takes a long drag.

He… can’t. Explain it. To Jordi or himself. He’d thought that giving Jordi free rein would work, and it _did_ , but Damien’s voice only stays quiet for so long before that insidious whisper starts up again. He can cry and beg and struggle and secretly hope Jordi will realize that he wants it anyways, but the moment things are over, the wrong set of hands grab at him again. His head doesn’t fit right and neither does his skin; everything chafes these days.

And maybe he’s been abusing his magic word, wielding it like a blunt weapon when Jordi probably meant it to be a fine blade, but he can’t stop doing that either. He’s had a lifetime to figure out that _no_ is a meaningless protest. _Red_ holds a different kind of power.

“I’m not okay,” Aiden says.

“ _No_ , really? And here I was, thinking you were a fucking paragon of the well-adjusted. Of course you’re not okay. I don’t know _why_ you’re not okay, and I really wish you’d fucking tell me what it is you want me to stop doing instead of just, what, fucking hoping I intuit the right answer? Fuck that right in the ear. I have empathy issues, dipshit.” Jordi huffs out smoke like a dragon, rolls his neck until it pops, and ashes his cigarette in the sheets with utter disregard for the hotel staff.

He peels apart those objections, tries to figure out the real reason Jordi is angry. Since the refrain _use your words_ keeps showing up, he thinks he might have an idea—but that makes him want to either laugh or cry, because fuck. Fuck. He’s talked to Jordi more than anyone else but Donna in _years_. Never had a good grasp of talking to people even before then. He’s bad at communication.

His hands don’t shake. He breathes in smoke, watches the way Jordi’s chest rises and falls, lets the combination of visual and sensation drive away Damien’s touch, Damien’s voice, Damien’s ghost sitting on his shoulder.

“You gave me a safeword,” he says, dropping his own cigarette butt in the half-full glass on the nightstand. “I got used to fighting my way out of situations I didn’t want to be in. I expected to have to fight my way out of any situation with you too.”

“As if you could take me in an actual fight,” Jordi scoffs, but his gaze is sharp and incisive again. The desire to touch is slowly starting to overcome the revulsion at the idea of skin-to-skin contact and Aiden shifts closer, edges sideways under the sheets until his arm is brushing Jordi’s side.

“Exactly. I couldn’t take you in a fight. If I wanted you to stop, I didn’t have a way to force the issue.” He swallows, trusts that Jordi won’t make any sudden movements, then rolls into Jordi’s side fully, his arm slung over Jordi’s stomach, cheek pressed into the firm muscle of Jordi’s shoulder. “You gave me options. I wasn’t expecting options.”

“Jesus christ. Thanks for the vote of confidence but your decision to make me into a prospective rapist is really unappreciated. Just so you know.” Jordi flicks his cigarette butt across the room, drops his arm until it drapes over Aiden’s shoulders, his calloused fingers running over Aiden’s ribs.

“Sorry,” he whispers hoarsely, hating the way Jordi’s voice shapes the word _rapist_ , hating the sensation of someone else’s hands on his skin, hating how Damien’s lips stretch in a smile as they press against the curve of his ear.

“Not used to having a ‘no’ respected, huh?” There’s something violent lurking under Jordi’s words, but there’s always something violent lurking under Jordi’s words. He doesn’t read into it.

“Something like that.” He shuts his eyes, blocks out the light and whatever expression Jordi is making. There’s a gusty sigh from above, the muscle in Jordi’s chest flexing as he leans further over Aiden, the soft click of the lamp. 

“You’re going to give me ulcers,” Jordi says sourly, but he lays back down and pulls Aiden with him.


	5. [SUMMER]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trundling towards an ending, we are! And Aiden is trundling towards something like equilibrium at the same time. He needs a break, man.

The job needs him to be vicious, so he’s vicious. It’s a gang that he’d be hunting eventually anyways, so he doesn’t care how it looks, doesn’t care about the way Jordi watches him with something like glee and concern both. They dispatch the entire group, Jordi gets paid, everyone is happy.

He’s not happy.

He smokes through two packs in a day, more than he’s smoked in weeks, and thinks about finding a bottle. Jordi’s going to head off to another job and leave him behind, he knows that, accepts that, hates that fact because he can already feel himself drowning again. He wants to go back to Donna. He can’t abide the risk. He wants to go with Jordi, wherever that may be. That’s a risky prospect too.

Jordi catches him before he can head outside and start in on the third pack, pins him to the door from behind and yanks his jeans down as he tries to break free. His cock is just as thick and heavy as Aiden thought it would be, fucks into him harder than he’s ever been fucked before, gets him to come with his own dick untouched the whole while.

He showers afterwards, then sits naked on the bed to wait for Jordi to come out as well.

“Eat a protein bar,” Jordi says as he emerges from a cloud of steam, towel around his waist. It’s an order that Aiden has no intention of following, but Jordi grabs two of them out of his own bag and throws them at his face. It seems like a waste to do otherwise then.

“Where are you going next?” he asks, telling himself it’s professional interest and knowing that’s a lie.

“Dunno yet. I’ve got a lot of options, but I’m sticking to stateside for now since your passport situation is probably irrevocably fucked.” Jordi tosses his towel back towards the bathroom, clearly disinterested in wherever it might land, then throws himself on the bed and reaches for the second protein bar.

Aiden has a hard time swallowing the bite he’s taken, nuts and granola forming a tight lump in his throat. That sounds like an invitation, like an olive branch, like a peace offering, but he can’t be reading it right. He’s useful, but he’s not that useful. His brand of violence isn’t so rare that Jordi can’t find a reliable substitute somewhere else.

“Why?” he asks after finally choking down the rest of his bar. Goosebumps chase up his spine, Jordi’s warm palm following them as he hums quietly. The sound goes directly to his core, shivers through him until he’s shuddering with it, and he’s so desperate for whatever answer Jordi might give that he almost misses it when it actually comes.

“You owe me money. That’s one. I like fucking you, so that’s two. _Someone_ needs to take care of you, that’s three, but don’t you dare fucking imply that I have feelings or something. It’s not that deep. There’s just not that many ultra-masc, ultra-repressed fixers desperate to gag on my cock, you know?”

He doesn’t know, and he suspects that at least one of those answers is a smokescreen. But Jordi catching feelings is alarmingly out of character, so he’s pretty sure that one is pure truth. Jordi’s finger can trace the knobs of his spine and he wonders, not for the first time, when he burned all that extra muscle and fat off. It hadn’t happened overnight, but somewhere between the cigarettes and the headaches, he lost any sense of his appetite.

Damien smooths a hand down his chest in mockery of Jordi’s hand on his back and he shuts his eyes, trying to forget the feel of both of them.

“I’ve been all over the east coast this year,” he says, pushing the heels of his hands against his eyelids. The headache is back, but he can’t tell if it’s the usual thing or if it’s whiplash from all the fury and disappointment that Jordi fucked out of him. He’s eaten more food in the last three days than he’s eaten in weeks. It’s probably for the best, but he’s struggling to agree with that when his headache comes with nausea and a desperate need to shut the light out.

“We’ll head west then. I’ve got a prospect out in Seattle, big cleanup operation for the Triads, and that’ll keep us busy for a few weeks. We can make our way back down the coast, maybe swing through the southwest, figure out our plans for winter after that.” Jordi stretches out behind him until something audibly pops, then groans in relief. “Call it a roadtrip. We’ll get a better SUV to take it in.”

He breathes in, pain throbbing in his temples, and thinks about being trapped in a car with Jordi’s manic energy for days, weeks, _months_ even. Breathes out and thinks about getting bullied into eating three meals a day, no matter that the influx of food makes him sick. Breathes in and thinks about Jordi stealing his cigarettes, Jordi’s caustic disregard for his personal space, Jordi’s grousing over the shower and complaints about him taking up room in the bed. Breathes out and thinks about the insults, the sneering, the violence, the way Jordi plays into his worse nature and then pushes him even further beyond.

Breathes in and thinks about sleeping for more than a couple hours at night. Breathes out and thinks about Jordi’s hands on him in a way that drives the ghosts off.

“I think I’m going to puke,” he says, unmoving from his hunched over position on the side of the bed. It sparks a flurry of activity behind him, Jordi’s panicked squawking and thud of feet on the carpet worsening his headache. He manages to hold onto his composure just long enough for a plastic trash can to be shoved between his knees, but he can’t hold onto it long enough for Jordi to be completely out of the way before he’s bent over and gagging.

To his credit, Jordi keeps holding the trash can. The nuts and granola are unpleasant coming up, but he hadn’t eaten anything else in hours and it’s the only thing left in his stomach. Little miracles, maybe.

“Okay, so, fuck the organic shit, you clearly can’t handle something without saturated fats and added sugars,” Jordi says, setting the trash can down once Aiden stops heaving. The glide of fingers through his hair is not unwelcome, so he leans into the touch, feels the way Jordi drags sweat between the strands and mutters under his breath about it.

Then the hands pause, Jordi’s thumb resting over the pale scar on his scalp. It’s bad enough that he’s pretty sure his hair will never grow there again; since it’s usually a mess, he doesn’t care, just keeps in mind that he can’t get it cut too short when he stops off to have it trimmed. Scars are distinctive. This one aches like a brand and he doesn’t want anyone else’s eyes on it.

“Nasty crack in your skull here.” Jordi’s thumb drags over it, sends a spike of pain through his head that might be psychosomatic. Hands in his hair are one of those things he doesn’t remember, but Jordi’s touch has him feeling the burn of wood floors under his cheek, hearing the shatter of glass, smelling Jack Daniel’s sharp under his nose and in his hair as he bleeds and bruises and—

“Bottle of whiskey,” he says hoarsely, dragging a shaking hand over his mouth. He needs to get up and shower again, needs to ask Jordi if his laundry got dropped off with the suit. Doesn’t do either of those things. “Pretty bad concussion. Lasted a couple months.”

“Probably worse than just a concussion, but sure. Are you going to safeword me out of the bathroom again, or can I help you shower? Because you look like you’re going to drop if I leave you alone in there.” Jordi’s voice is acidic, but his touch stays gentle, soft and lingering as he smooths his hands over the shape of Aiden’s skull again.

He might have a panic attack if Jordi comes into the shower with him again. But he finds himself saying, “I could use someone to keep me upright.”

* * *

Jordi, thank fucking God, never asks. He primes himself for it for the first couple of weeks, waiting for the moment Jordi finally poses the question and he has to answer it somehow, but it never comes. Even if he has to relive it in a dozen different tiny ways, he never has to speak it into being, never has to try and separate fact from fiction, reality from the nightmares that still dog his steps even if it’s easier to fall back asleep now.

_Easier_ , he mouths to himself in the shower, mocking and relieved all at once. Jordi lets him be most of the time, has figured out that he finds sanctuary in a porcelain tomb with steam all around him, so he composes his unspoken journal entries almost every night now. _Easier, but only because Jordi won’t let me work when I wake up. I always wake him up too, so it’s not like I can try and sneak it_.

They track across the Midwest, skirt Chicago very carefully before driving through the endless fields of wheat, or corn, or whatever the fuck it is they grow in flyover country. Most nights they can find a motel; on the nights they can’t, they just keep driving, stop on the side of the road to stretch their legs, argue about the music playing and whether or not it’s going to rain soon. On day six they hit Seattle, and Jordi tells him exactly which hotel to head for, doesn’t ask about the way Aiden gets twitchy about some of the bars they’ve passed on this trip.

Seattle lasts almost a month before Jordi picks up more Triad work down in San Francisco. By then, he stops bracing for the question that never comes, lets Jordi feed him with only a token protest, whittles himself back down to half a pack a day even if he gets a little jittery when he’s not frontloading nicotine every morning. It’s easy to fall into the simple things, like fighting with Jordi over the air conditioning and changing the radio station back to rock whenever Jordi dozes off in the passenger’s seat.

They don’t stay there for long, not when Jordi absolutely loathes the city for some reason Aiden can’t wheedle out of him, not when he gets an itch between his shoulders and remembers the other time he slipped up and got caught. That’s fine. They track westward shortly after, because Jordi hates the City of Angels even more than he hates this one—California as a whole holds some source of resentment for him—and he gets twitchy. Not at the wheel, because driving is as easy as it’s always been, but overall.

He’s been running on instinct for so long that he stopped keeping track of where he was going, but Jordi argues with the GPS and pulls out an old-fashioned paper map and consults with him on their destinations until he can’t forget the names of places they’ve been. He’s real, and the world is real, and the realness burns like a coal held in his hand, outwardly innocent but eating away at his flesh all the same. Going without names helped him run from the ghosts, but he’s got his path marked out behind him, has to carry an identity that fits like a glove, fits like the jacket he hates wearing now, fits despite the fact that he thinks it shouldn’t fit at all.

And Jordi still doesn’t ask.

* * *

The hand on his throat is there as a warning more than anything else, too light in touch to actually restrict his breathing. All of Jordi’s weight is on his wrists instead, where the other hand has him pinned to the pillows, the grip on them bruising tight. He has room to say anything he wants, so the only thing he does is moan Jordi’s name like a prayer, like a curse.

“Kick me off if you really don’t want it,” Jordi says, thrusting into him hard enough to make him gasp. The muscles in his chest flex under Aiden’s thighs, where he’s stopped even pretending like he’s kicking Jordi off, where he’s wrapped them so tight that Jordi can’t pull out.

“No,” he whispers, arching up until his throat is pressed harder into Jordi’s palm. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying _no_ to, only that he can say it all he wants and Jordi won’t care. There’s a certain kind of freedom in that. “No, no, don’t—”

Stop, he doesn’t say, or maybe keep going, or maybe he never plans to finish the sentence at all. Jordi takes it as it’s meant, fucks into him harder and grins like a wild thing. The hair hanging around his face is tousled, shaggy, desperately in need of a pair of scissors, and he wants to drag his fingers through it but Jordi’s still pinning him down, keeping him from touching back, using him like a fucktoy and pretending like he’s not enjoying it too.

Jordi drives into him with a low groan, pulls back until he’s almost out, forces the fat head of his cock against Aiden’s prostate until he’s shuddering with need. When Jordi shifts his grip and thrusts deep again, he sobs out a combination of protests and pleas for more, jerks his hands frantically and rolls his hips to meet Jordi’s movement with his own.

“You _do_ want it.” Jordi tightens his grip, squeezes just hard enough to make Aiden struggle to breathe for a few seconds. “If you weren’t such a slut, you’d fight back.”

He gasps wetly, cants his hips up as his cock bobs, feels Jordi’s hand fall from his throat to his hip. Each thrust winds him just a little bit tighter, until he’s shaking like a mannequin with its wires pulled too taut, until the only thing he can chant is Jordi’s name. The tears rolling down his face are at least halfway from overstimulation, but the other half is the way Jordi’s hands leave bruises on him that never quite go away and he _needs it_ so badly that he can barely think, much less do anything else.

“Come on,” Jordi hisses, fucking into him so hard that he knows he’ll be sore in the morning, “come for me so I can feel how tight you are, Aiden, I wanna feel you _break_.”

And he does, Jordi’s voice the thing he needs to fall to pieces, Jordi’s cock driving into him even as he spills across his own chest, Jordi’s hands tightening on him when he follows a few minutes later. It’s everything he’s ever dreamed of, for good or for ill, and it’s the only way he knows how to ask for what he _wants_ anymore.

Jordi pulls out of him after catching his breath, heads to the bathroom for a washcloth and wipes himself down before doing the same between Aiden’s legs. Since they’ve been barebacking, it’s a welcome gesture. He’s not sure how to feel about the fact that he never got tested and probably should. Probably should tell Jordi too.

The mattress bounces as Jordi falls back on it, the covers rustling as he stretches an arm out to drag Aiden closer. He rolls with it, rolls into the sweaty heat of Jordi’s body, hooks a leg over Jordi’s until he’s half-straddling one thigh. It won’t last long before he needs a shower with a fury that burns, but the shower in this motel has lukewarm water and it won’t make him feel clean anyways. There’s a reason he’s not jumping to get out of bed yet.

Sweat clings to Jordi’s neck too, but he shoves his face there anyways. It’s a clean sort of sweat, the kind that mingles with Jordi’s usual soap and cologne and the smell of sex in the room until it turns into something he could breathe in for ages. Jordi smells like home, like safety, like all the things he absolutely isn’t, but nearly three months of traveling together makes him more like home than anywhere else Aiden’s been in—a while.

“You don’t get off if I’m not forcing you,” Jordi says, his fingers trailing over the muscle in Aiden’s back. His vertebrae aren’t showing through anymore but he still hasn’t gained all his weight back. He’ll take what little victories he can find.

“I know,” he replies, lips brushing against Jordi’s skin, Jordi’s beard scraping against his forehead. “There’s a reason I keep letting you force me.”

Jordi grunts, splays his hand over Aiden’s ribs, reaches over with his other one and wipes away the tear tracks that cut down his cheeks. Years ago, he probably would have burned with humiliation over that. Might have shuddered with the shame of crying, because boys don’t cry, didn’t cry, never cried when it mattered, only reached out for the gun one of the idiots left within his grasp. Now, he doesn’t care anymore—not when Damien whispers more insidious things in his ears all hours of the day.

Not as often when Jordi’s around, though.

“So, are we ever going to talk about this thing you don’t want to talk about? Obvious contradiction in that aside, I’m getting the feeling that you need to talk about it. Or give me a couple hints, maybe. More hints than I’ve _gotten_ , because I’m like ninety, ninety-five percent sure you did not have a rape kink back in Chicago.” Jordi’s fingers tap his cheek, dance down his jaw, flick and sway with his words like he can’t help himself. Probably can’t. Jordi always talks with his hands.

“I’d really rather not,” he says, his voice perfectly even. Rough with all the things he doesn’t want to say, but even. Jordi’s thumb catches a stray tear before it can roll down and dampen his neck.

“Figured you wouldn’t. Not that surprising because I fucking don’t ever want to talk about it either, but you’re an absolute fucking mess. Therapy’s still on the table. I have a therapist, I could refer you to him.” The dancing fingers still for a moment. “This is shitty pillow talk. Let’s retire.”

He blinks, blinks again, shifts his own hand to stretch his fingers over Jordi’s muscular stomach, lifts his head when the words finally register. Jordi’s thigh slides between his own, intimate, warm. The look on Jordi’s face is not amused.

“I mean it,” Jordi insists, correctly interpreting the expression he’s making. “Let’s retire. I’m getting too old for this shit and fuck knows I have enough money already, and you’ve been halfway retired for fucking years now. You’re just like Gibbs building a boat in the basement, except your boat is made of dead gangsters all stacked up in a pyre, or something like that.”

That’s a hell of a sentence to unpack, but he has to reluctantly admit that it’s not _wrong_. He hasn’t picked up a job, a real job, a job outside of Jordi’s jobs in… too long. It was altruism, or boredom, or the need to make a difference that drove him before; after, it was all revenge, a way to spill the loathing out that curdles in his veins. Money hasn’t factored in a long time. Professionalism hasn’t factored for even longer.

“...Why me?” he asks eventually, because that’s the question that really burns on his lips. He’d asked it months ago, means to ask it again and again, still can’t quite trust the first answer Jordi gave him. His skin itches, crawls, needs to be scrubbed off before he can feel clean again, but he doesn’t want to leave Jordi’s side. Not when this is so important.

“Because I don’t exactly have a lot of friends, Aiden. Most of them are dead by now. I’d like to retire with at least one of them intact, and the only way I can make sure that happens is if I keep you by my side. And since you are the most fuckable of those friends remaining, you’ve won the lottery.” Jordi pauses meaningfully, then waggles his eyebrows and grins. “I’m the jackpot, in case you were wondering.”

“Of course you are,” he says, not smiling back. It’s closer to the truth than maybe Jordi realizes. He’s been more stable these last few weeks than he was at any point before then, able to keep himself balanced on that knife edge with more and more ease the longer he lets Jordi take the reins. 

He’s so tired. Jordi lets him sleep but a life of hotel rooms breaks him down by inches, car seats bending his spine as gunshots deafen him piece by piece. When he’d started letting himself spiral down to that inevitable implosion, it hadn’t mattered so much but now—he can’t keep going like this. Most days he still wants to die, still refuses to let himself go that easily, still craves all the things that are harder than cigarettes but so much more likely to kill him quickly, and he’s tired. He’s done. He’s sick of listening to Damien whisper in his ear, even if Jordi’s good at drowning him out.

He thinks of Donna and her apartment, grocery shopping on the weekends and taking the train wherever she needed to go, not driving and not moving on after a bare couple weeks in one place. Thinks about how the only place he’s felt safe before now has been her couch. Thinks of the way she’ll look at him if he has the temerity to introduce Jordi as something like his boyfriend.

“How do you feel about Boston?” he asks.

* * *

The floors are wood but bleached pale grey instead of the warm oak he can’t stand to look at. Windows stretch across the walls, leading to the open balcony that looks out over the bay, an expensive as hell view that he doesn’t dare ask the price tag for. Never would have pegged Jordi for a waterfront view kind of guy, but it’s not like it’s _his_ money going to waste here. Jordi can spend all the money he likes.

It’s bigger than his motel room. Bigger than the apartment he used to share with Damien. Bigger than his sister’s house. Still not the biggest condo Jordi could have bought, but especially without furniture, the open floor plan is cavernously large. He stares out the windows and sips his coffee, wonders if they’re going to be sleeping on an air mattress again tonight or if Jordi’s managed to squeeze faster shipping out of the online company he ordered through.

There’s a quiet rap of knuckles on the front door, then the louder click of heels on the wood floor.

“You left your door open,” Donna tells him, carrying two to-go cups that steam slightly in the air-conditioned room. She glances at his overbrewed mug of coffee, then shakes her head and sets one of her cups down. “Hope you don’t mind visitors.”

“If I minded, I would have shut the door,” he says, though the real reason has more to do with the furniture company currently trying to figure out how to haul things upstairs. Apparently, this building has a freight elevator. He hasn’t had a chance to prowl around the whole property, mark out all the escape routes, soothe the feral thing inside him that needs to know every path to freedom.

“It’s a nice place. _Expensive_ building though, are you sure you can afford this?” Donna fixes him with her critical gaze, not needing to say _the last time I saw you, you were homeless and living out of a duffel bag_. He knows it well enough.

“Not my cash going into it.” He sets his mug down, picks up the to-go cup and checks the order marked on the side. Americano, extra shot, pump of hazelnut. She’d remembered.

Donna hums but doesn’t say anything else. She’s looking him over, probably because the only thing he’d sent her was an address and the message _i’m alive_ , neither of which would have been comforting. He hadn’t wanted to show up on her doorstep unannounced, but he knows she cased the building first too. That’s the other reason he left the door open. Gave her a chance to decide if this was a trap.

Not a trap for her, at least. He hasn’t decided if it’s a trap for him yet. Staying around Jordi is easy because _Jordi_ is easy—honest to a fault, always spilling over with energy, willing to take charge and drag Aiden along in his wake. That doesn’t mean that it’s actually right, or good, or safe, no matter how much it feels like all three of those things.

Her fingers are careful when they catch his hand, turning his wrist over to reveal one of those bruises that Jordi keeps leaving on him. He knows what this looks like. For once, it isn’t true.

“If I make a joke about Fifty Shades, I’ll be in the doghouse for the next few weeks,” he says, curling his fingers around hers. The bones in her hand are delicate, so easily broken, and Damien hisses about _breakable things, my boy_ but it’s getting easier to ignore him. “He never gives me more than I ask for.”

“That’s not the same thing as it being okay,” Donna tells him disapprovingly, squeezing his hand tight. “If you need a place to stay—to hide, to get away, just to hang out for a little while—you know where I am. The invitation is still open.”

That she already knows makes it easier for him to breathe. That she already knows makes it possible for him to be here at all. He smiles, for what feels like the first time in forever. “I know. Why do you think I came out here in the first place?”

After a long moment of consideration, Donna smiles back.


End file.
